The Calm Before the Storm
by LittlePageAndBird
Summary: The Doctor and River's last date before their lives change forever; set just after The Power of Three, a light fluffy short focussing on the most unique and wonderful couple in the Cosmos. A prequel to the story, "Aliens and Sociopaths: Tempus Vivere." Please enjoy!


_**Disclaimer: We own nothing whatsoever.**_

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"I just saw a Judoon holding hands with a Zygon! Imagine that! Anything goes here, I like it. I can't really understand how that would physically work, mind you, although I suppose the Zygon could just morph into a Judoon, so really it could work for any species… That's probably not what their main aim was when they developed the ability to shape-shift… Imagine a Zygon being romantic! Imagine a _Judoon_ being romantic! The mind boggles!"

River wished that she could muster the energy to open her eyes just to roll them at her husband. His voice was right in her ear where she lay on her back, meaning that he was far too close for her liking.

She lifted a refreshingly cold cucumber slice from one of her eyes to see him sitting cross-legged next to the massage table, and raised an eyebrow. "Go away."

His brow crinkled. "It's only our first day here and you've already said that seventeen times! I've barely seen you!"

She smirked. "And it's been _perfect_, sweetie."

"It's our anniversary!"  
"So what, I have to spend time with you now?" She snorted, carefully placing the piece of cucumber back over her eye. "No thank you."

"But- isn't that the whole point of this fortnight?"  
"Well, it was. But then I discovered Sebastian." The corner of her mouth curled upwards as she lifted a hand to lazily point at her feet, where an olive-skinned man with a mop of curly black hair and no shirt was busy intensely massaging her ankles. "He's working his way up," she whispered emphatically over the whale music.

He watched the man with his hands currently on his wife with disdain. "I could do that," he muttered scornfully.

"Now, there's something to think about in the Jacuzzi. Sebastian," River drawled. "Would you be a dear and pass me that delicious cocktail?" She lingered on the last word, making sure she put extra emphasis on the first syllable. The disturbingly attractive man pressed a tall glass with a little paper umbrella and sugar around the rim in her lifted hand. "There you are, Miss Song," he purred in, of course, a thick Italian accent.

"Mrs," the Doctor corrected sulkily.

"Professor," she reminded him, taking a sip of the cocktail. It was a vivid shade of pink; he suspected it looked more appetising than it tasted.

She made a low humming sound as she swallowed it, before proceeding to lick the sugar-coated glass rim in what seemed to him like slow motion. "Want some?" she asked casually, as if sensing his increasingly large eyes glued to her.

Assuming with admittedly a slight pang of disappointment that she was talking about the drink, he cleared his throat and mumbled a declination.

"Suit yourself. Aren't there any children's play areas that you could currently be having too much fun in?"

Honestly, he was already having too much fun here with the visual aid that was his wife, but he was hardly going to admit that. "I got thrown out of the last one. Just as well; I almost drowned in that… ball pool…"

She had arched her back to put her drink on the little table behind her. It accentuated very particular parts of her, to say the least, and he believed that she knew it. Even so, he finally lost the ability of speech. Perhaps that was the intention.

The towel covering her had slipped down a little, and she didn't bother adjusting it. "I'm having _so_ much fun here! You do know how to spoil a girl, don't you?"

"He's just using his hands; it's hardly rocket science," he muttered huffily, his chin resting heavily in his hands.

"I meant you, you idiot. Although for the record, hand usage can go a _long_ way."

The Doctor's eyes flickered up to River, ignoring the umpteenth entendre in this exchange.

"Do you really like it?"

"Of course I do," she answered breezily, as if this fact was blatantly obvious, though of course it was far from it to him. A little smile ghosted across her face. "Massages, alcohol and my pretty boy by my side; could things be any better?" Her smirk intensified, telling him the genre of her next words before she spoke them. "And we haven't even got to our room yet."

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Um- did I tell you we're in the deluxe honeymoon suite, right on the top floor? Really lovely; it's the only room up there."

"Ah, good; then we won't disturb anyone. Don't want to be getting noise complaints."

"The, um, views are beautiful."

"I saw it in the brochure. King sized bed with silk sheets? I won't be looking at the views, sweetie. And neither will you." She opened an eye just to wink it at him. "Well. You'll have _a_ view, and a nice one at that. But I'll let you take me to dinner first." She grinned at him, admiring the blush along his cheeks.

"The restaurant is lovely here, really amazing, five star," he said quickly, steering the subject away from beds with silk sheets. "Apparently, the food's delicious."

"Actually delicious, or in the way that fish fingers and custard are "delicious"?" River asked dryly.

His eyebrows dipped. "What do you mean?"

She didn't answer, eyes trailing down the ridiculously short towel draped over her. "Well, if we're going to dinner, I suppose I'll have to get dressed. Although, what time is it? We've got a good couple of hours yet. I might spend a while in the private sauna…" Her gaze drifted back up to her husband, a fresh glitter in it. "Care to join me?"

The Doctor shifted on the cool stone floor anxiously. "In- in the, um, in the sauna?" he asked timidly.

"Yes," she drawled slowly. "Although it's pretty warm in there; I'll _probably_ have to remove my clothes. I hope you don't mind," she uttered with a casual lilt and a smirk.

"Or- Or. We could have a look around. Ooh! They have open-top hovercraft tours every hour!" he cried, pulling a leaflet from his jacket pocket and peering at it.

"That sounds _fascinating_."

"Doesn't it?" His grin faded slowly on seeing the look on her face, one so carefully crafted to appear unimpressed that he wondered if she practiced it when she was alone. "Oh."

She smirked at the sulk he lapsed into at her sarcasm. "Tell you what, sweetie; give me another half an hour on my own, and then I'm all yours."

It was too good an offer to resist, so the Doctor did as he was told; although finding something to occupy him for half an hour without slipping into a boredom-induced coma proved rather difficult.

After what felt like an age, a sudden impatient drumming on his shoulder startled him.

"Here you are! You wandered off. You're always wandering off; I should keep you on a leash."

River was by his side in a loose flower-print dress that swished around her knees as she circled him. "Sebastian offered me a free cocktail, so I helped myself to four. Where's this hovercraft, then?"

He caught her arm to keep her upright, admiring the slightly manic look in her eyes with a sparkly smile. "Whoa. We just missed one; the next one isn't for an hour."

"Well, we'll have to find something else!" She was restless next to him, spinning around in half-circles. "What should we do?"

"Um… I'm not sure." The Doctor chewed his lip hopelessly. "I don't think there's much to do at this time of day that you'd enjoy…"

"Well then," she declared suddenly. "Let's go!"

"Where?" he asked quizzically, hopping after her when she danced down the hallway.

"Anywhere!" she sang, spinning on her heel to grin at him before turning back and kicking her heels off to sprint down a corridor.

He frowned as he trotted after her. "But- we haven't even been here a day! We have a room; I had us booked in for-"

"Oh, shut up!" she cried impatiently, taking his hand with a manic grin and dragging him to the cupboard where the Tardis was safely tucked away. "We have the Universe at our fingertips, sweetie; let's go and touch it!"

"How many of those pink sugary drinks did you say you had, River?"

She answered him with no more than a smirk, opening the Tardis doors with a snap of her fingers.

He followed her inside to find her sitting on the controls, swinging her legs restlessly. "Where are you taking me?"

The cocktails had formed a new husky edge to her words that made him pull at his shirt collar before gesturing at the controls. "You choose."

River clapped her hands together excitedly. "Can I?" Not waiting for confirmation, she leapt off the controls and whizzed around them with effortless elegance, flicking levers at dizzying speed.

They landed with a smooth bump moments later. "Voila!" River announced, frolicking to the doors and throwing them open with a bursting grin. They were bathed in a warm glow, making the Doctor shield his eyes as he came to join her.

Her drunken trip ideas had produced mixed results in the past. Some had led them to diamond cliffs and starlight, others to blazing fires and angry mobs; usually the latter. Fortunately, she hadn't consumed quite enough to bring out the perilously daring streak in her; just a little of the well-hidden romantic side.

The view before them trapped his breath in a way that places so rarely did. The glow came from a crimson sun, alone in a rosy sky that faded to indigo at the edges. They were parked atop a grassy mountain; valleys stretching out below them filled with vivid flowers the size of earth trees that swayed in time to the breeze which washed the sweet scent of alien pollen over their noses.

"Is this Mistellia?" he asked, voice irrationally hushed as if frightened to disturb the soothing peace of the planet.

"I've always wanted to go," River explained breathlessly, a red tint along her cheeks. She treaded forwards carefully, her bare feet sinking into the lush grass. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"It is- it's…"

A light thud made him trail off, and he looked down bemusedly to find her lying flat on her back in the grass, looking up at him with a lazy smile; the rosy haze of Mistellia seemed to have calmed her. The light of the red sun glittered in her eyes when she laughed. "You've got that face on again."

He played along, sitting cross-legged next to her and slipping off his jacket. "What face would that be?"

"The, 'She's-Hot-When-She's-Mad!' face."

"You should be used to that face by now," he answered with a wry smile, lying down next to her carefully.

"Because I'm always hot?"

"Because you're always mad."

"I'm not as mad as you." River rolled onto her stomach, biting back a grin and gazing at her husband affectionately. "We never checked where we were," she realised, her chin resting in her hands.

His eyes remained fixed on the coral sky as he talked. "Well, you know we're married; we have been for going on a century from my end. The last time I saw you was… Oria Fentusa, with the frozen waterfall and the snowboards."

"Ah. That was fun." She threw him that smirk again, one that told him just what was running through her head better than if she had spoken it. "That wasn't long ago for me, actually. But I last saw you at… Asgard."

She seemed reluctant to admit it, somewhat understandably. "Oh! That was quite a while ago for me."

"I know." She rolled her eyes to disguise the light that had snuffed out within them, plucking a blade of grass from the earth and running it through her fingers. "God, you were _tiny_. You seemed frightened of me; you sat there stiff as a board looking at me as if I was possessed every time I spoke. It was… funny."

Her voice had dropped, just enough for him to notice despite her attempts to disguise it. His eyes flickered over her anxiously, feeling that familiar ripple of guilt that coursed through him when he was reminded just what it was that he did to her.

"Don't you give me your sad eyes," she warned him. "Don't get me wrong; there are a lot of advantages to running into younger versions of you. You're a lot easier to manipulate," she joked, trying a laugh that didn't quite reach her eyes. He wondered how much of all this was to reassure herself. "In any case, a date's a date; even when you're all baby-face, we still always have fun one way or another. And I'm well aware that to see _my_ you…" She lifted a hand to cup the side of his face, almost tenderly. "The backwards timelines are part of the package."

"Don't you ever wish they weren't?" he asked softly, unsure of whether or not he truly wanted to know the answer. But he'd begun to notice that she was just a little more vulnerable now, more trusting because she was finally with the Doctor that knew her; the Doctor he had only recently become.

"Oh, but then we'd be _normal_." She pulled a face. "You know I don't do normal, sweetie."

"You said you didn't do weddings once," he reminded her with a grin. "Maybe you'll change."

"Hmm; somehow, I can't see myself picking up the kids from football practice with the Land Rover in my dungarees. Settling down is not for me." She plucked a flower from the grass, fastening it in her hair with a giggle. "Speaking of which; what about my parents? Have you seen them lately?"

"I have. I took them to Rio the other day, by your mother's request."

"How are they?"

"They're fine. Earth got invaded by little black cubes a few weeks ago, but we sorted it out."

"Oh, they told me about that." She smiled at his bemused frown. "I visit them too, sweetie. You must be happy."

"Why?"

"Because they're not stopping," she said knowingly, her hand slipping to play with his bow tie. "They told me they'd been thinking about it a while ago, but last time I visited they said Brian had convinced them otherwise."

He couldn't help a smug smile flooding his features. "Well. Yes. They still have their house and their jobs, but they decided to keep travelling, for… well, forever."

"I don't blame them. You can't get this in Leadworth." River flipped onto her back, her cheek resting against his shoulder with a contented sigh. "We should go dancing."

He chuckled at her suggestion, marvelling at her unrelenting energy. "Don't _you_ have a house and a job to get back to?"

"Oh, nothing I can't abandon at a moment's notice. Unless you want to get rid of me…"

"Never." He found her hand, letting her twine her fingers through his.

His wife smiled, nudging his shoulder with her nose. "Be careful what you wish for."

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**Thanks for reading! We hope you enjoyed it; if you did please check out the sequel Aliens and Sociopaths: Tempus Vivere, which follows on from this, to find out what happens to the Doctor and River and how they cope with it...**

**LittlePageandBird xx**


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